OOC: I'm writing this in the future so that it will eventually pull together better with the flow of events, but I have the RL time now. I don't know that word of these events would reach the Empire from any source but Vissa, but it's plausible that someone might hear a part of the story on the wind somehow.

Cairo, 1107

The great city, recently arisen as the mightiest in all of the Fatimid Caliphate, sat fetid and sweltering under a burning sun late in the summer. The Nile was unusually low this time a year, and many of the swamp basins west of the city had drained and become rich beds of black, bubbling mud. Farmers were carting off this fertile soil by the truckload, north and south to their fields, and the roads of the palace city were all freshly coated in a vile slime. Alas for the citizens, the smell of the soil, sewn through with rotting organic mass, was worse even than the traditional fertilizer utilized by farmers, camel dung, and a dank miasma hung like a cloud over all of Cairo. The odor was nowhere worse than at the slave market, just outside the Christian quarter, where the influx of slaves taken had also been increased by the drought, and the traffic of farmers leaving and slaves entering met and slowed roads all through the zone.

Vissarionas ek Lesvou was taking a break from the noise and bustle of the slave market at a little cafe nestled in next to a date merchant's warehouse. The dates here were exceptional and sold in every imaginable fashion, dried, seasoned, roasted, and even fried with a crushed nut and grain crust. In concert with the rich, black drink favored by the locals it was a snack which very nearly overwhelmed the stench carried on the hot winds.

Very nearly, but not quite. Vissa returned his last date to the tray he was eating from, drained his mug, and stepped away from his table to return to the market. All around him he could hear the strange up and down pitches of the various local languages, primarily Arabic among the educated, but still mixed with a smattering of others. Though he'd been studying Arabic it was still much a matter of intelligent guesswork when he was actually trying to understand it, and all mixed together it simply sounded like madness. That is why as soon as a voice speaking Greek came into his ears he immediately latched onto it and followed it's onrushing flow.

Followed it, grinning slightly, until it's full import struck him and he stumbled in the street. The voice was one of exceptional beauty in itself, clear and high, obviously a woman's voice, but the words... This woman was cursing like the crudest dock worker. A string of the most unimaginable insults, to lineage, intellect, and sexual ability. Some of the things the voice listed as among the qualities of the berated were surely not even possible, but nonetheless exquisitely vulgar.

Blushing furiously Vissa cast about for the source of this rich mix of sensations. There, among a trio of Palace guards, stood a woman covered from head to toe in deep purple cloth trimmed in gold, with a narrow band of thinner cloth forming a window for her to gaze out of, but still keeping her eyes from being seen. She stood in the street facing one of the guards while the two others gazed about to either side, and her fury was palpable. The group was just outside a small shop that sold beaten gold ornaments brought up out of the deep desert, and perhaps her anger was that the guards refused to allow her to go in and shop. In any case Vissa followed the sound of that golden, furious voice and walked to the front of the shop himself, gazing at some wax impressions the merchant had set out to display his wares without risking the actual gold.

When, at last, the woman paused for breath Vissa remained facing the display and spoke in a musing tone, as though to himself, in Greek,

'I had not expected to hear the mother toungue so basely treated in these streets today m'lady.'

Without the slightest hesitation the veiled woman replied, still in a tone of anger seemingly addressed at the guard, 'If your ears didn't hang open like the useful part of a whore riding a camel's hump you could have passed back to your Quarter without it, Christian!'

That voice. Rich, sly, angry, and uncompromising, but as pretty as a flower hanging in the air. Appropriate to Cairo in a way, a beautiful city itself now suffering under a magnificiently vile stinking heat wave. For Vissa, who had never known the touch of a woman and had not heard his language spoken by one in a very long time, that voice was capitvating no matter it's words.

'I must cry your pardon then my lady! I meant no offense, but to hear Greek spoken in your exquisite voice took me aside from my labors and gave me reason to pause. If you wish it, I will leave you now.'

A silence overtook the girl. Even were his back not turned Vissa could not have read anything from her features under the heavy veil, but the tension in the air was such that he was very nearly drawn to turn about and confront the girl's guards. A moment later the woman had walked right up beside him and reached her right hand out to stroke one of the wax structures delicately. Her hand was tiny and pale brown, but encrusted with the most remarkable array of rings imaginable. Her voice rose up again, but pitched just for him now,

'No, stay. You are the most interesting thing I have encountered all month. What is your name?'

Still Vissa did not turn to look at her, tried not to betray any sign to the guards who must be watching that they were speaking, as he replied,

'I am Vissarionas ek Lesvou, a senator of Byzantium, late of Antioch. I am most pleased to meet you.'

'And I,' she replied, 'am Aliya al-Badawiyya. The Caliph's favorite concubine.' Her voice somehow carried the sound of her eyebrow raised in curiousity to discover how the Christian would react to such news.

Vissarionas was stunned and amazed. Stories had been carried all through the city of this young woman, who had been asked by the Caliph himself to join his court and had the temerity to decline. The Caliph was not a man to accept such over easily, and so he requested that Aliya's Bedouin tribe marry her to him. Of course they assented. She was reputed to be a poetess of unparalleled skill, the daughter of a rich nomadic trader, well educated and incomparably beautiful.

'My lady your extraordinary reputation has come before you, and I am deeply honored. I pray your forbearance that I do not bow, for I believe your guardsmen would attempt to unman me if I did.'

Laughter erupted from her, and to cover it she turned with one of the wax works to show it to the guard, commenting something about it in Arabic. When she turned back she spoke again, in Greek,

'I take it then, Christian, that you do not know the meaning of the word eunuch?' The last word is spoken in Arabic.

Vissa replied cautiously, 'It is a term I have heard used to refer to the Palace guards dressed as yours. I presume it is a term of respect for their office.'

Again the trilling laugh, high and clear, and again the wry tone, 'Indeed, of respect! You intrigue me little Greek. I will see you again.'

'If you wish it my lady, but how is such a thing to be accomplished?'

Her tone turned to one of rich disparagement, 'Why I shall simply tell the Caliph I must have a Greek tutor. One hour a week I will send for you to come to the Palace and entertain me. So long as you do not become boring the wages will be sufficient to secure you here.'

'My lady your Greek is perfect. You have no need of a tutor, no more than I have need of wages.'

Once again her voice emerged full of wit, and carrying a laugh unrealized behind it, 'Then perhaps we shall see if you have other lessons, other talents. Indeed, perhaps you may teach me something for the Caliph!'

Turning once more to the guards the concubine abruptly ends the conversation, and Vissa can think of no further reason to speak. She addresses the guards in Arabic, and they move to form a triangle around her once again, impassively clearing a path as she once more resumes cursing them richly in Greek. As her voice fades into the distance Vissa stands somewhat awestruck before the absurd little wax display, considering what strange turns of fate time may bring. For years now he and Stephen had been slowly working their way into the confidences of some of the well placed slave traders, and making no small amount of money in the trade as a sideline. For years Rafi had inculcated himself with the beggar's network in Cairo, seeking a way to make a better placed contact. All of it to little avail, but all of it his duty, his destiny, to redeem himself in the eyes of self, Patriarch, and God.

And now one chance meeting with a slip of a girl shouting in Greek may turn out to be precisely what he required. As she faded into the distance he followed her divine voice lashing out horrific insults as long as he could.

'And you Ali. Your were born of a whore who stupidly rode a goat from Damascus to Cordoba without stopping, and when she finally stood up you rolled out coated in the beast's hair for him to piss on as you lay squalling in the dirt! And you Beram. Your father raised you solely on milk from the finest bulls in his herds, fed you only the most tender parts of pigs from his own left hand, and groomed your loving mother's hairy face every day! And you...'